THE NEW YORK CITY CULINAR MAP .->. - '- ,t 1 sY IA KALMAN AND RICK MEYEROWITZ FlOSSING LE.,*,NO R EVE. ftefe R,e TO 1 EZUMA'S REVENGE QUEENS -.,,;;; RPl CRÈME E D' VILlAGE RK f l> 0 1>0 , -I ;' FALAFEL <<<:-cJ> HILLS .. ,. CUKUMBA GARDENS MORiADfllA CE Jt ,t: A '> o$' .;)V ,.i. Q v 0 . :P v q +. ,...... 6<>,.() o é"o Jambalaya · Rutabaga Blvd GESUNDHEIT Yebeg Alecha Av Grilled Cheese AV DIM SUM . FOODMAVEN Av Peanut Brittle BAKED KNUCKLEHEAD THE CHIC LETS :;><> :.0 <JJ ' 1 .J. '. , Crème de Volaille Curnonski i,rs ORZO PARK Anchovy Av Finger Bowl Av Hard Scrapple Rd << ZASU PITTS , .;t v.,; (\6 POT UJÇK æiItJt!tY' AT CITY . ñ CJ tS':;, o() """0 :í" l> 'Sì . v '0 0 i$ltS' o? 'Sì Pitted Prunes Snout Salad . SUB GUM , JUNCTION . Nutcracker Av EAST !f? l> POPCOR J:-0 CAN 0' PEAS . NEW LARD AV rnedos InrylV Brûlée Blvd Spaghetti Western Bruciore . di Stomaco a 1'a<ì<> . Pea Brain A_ 0<> ' \SI . CANNOLI I' é$>(\+ DÚD DUCK PARK HAGGIS BEACH ty Rice -Y'-', · -- -ct. v ,, OL,. .....- --v O "9tS' 1- . SURF & , TURF PARK CROWN ROAST k -eft- , C'W\OU P.W:: CANNOLI Black Butter Bav BROOKLYN I iARBANZO BEAN WHAT TO DO WHEN SOMEONE IS CHOKING YOU ON THE SUBWAY -- -:-<t- S ] 67 rr-.. J( \ ,, : l [ gan tW FIRST SECOND THIRO FOURTH FIFTH 'fOIJ!t 'tfl>> ' exploit that market--and he liked it that way: He didn't want to undercut the small organic farms that had mesclun to them- selves when he started. He just wanted to sell the same product at the same price to a broader audience. In the end, though, he helped put them all out of business. "I was the pioneer, the wedge," he says. "I took every arrow in my back and in my ass, then I paved the way for the market th " to get ere. Mter TKO went under, a small or- ganic grower called Earthbound Farm bought most of its assets. Earthbound then went on to become a partner with a couple of the largest conventional grow- ers in the valley; Mission Ranches and Tanimura & Antle. Together, they now sell almost eighty per cent of the coun- try's organic greens-about a billion servings a year. Earthbound's farms are spread across six states, parcelled among microclimates where fewer insects will find them. Its efficiencies are such that the price of mesclun has fallen to five dollars a pound. "For a long time, all the guys at universities and the organic farmers said that you just can't do it well on a large scale," Warren Weber, Chez Panisse's first supplier, told me. "But when the commercial guys finally swooped in it seemed like they learned it in seconds." One morning near San Juan Bau- tista, forty-five minutes north of Koons's mâche farm, I watched one of Earth- bound's harvesters rip through a field of green oak-leaf lettuce. The machine had hili a dozen ungainly appendages, like some gizmo fresh from an inventor's basement, but it worked flawlessly. As it moved down the row, it first pushed a rakelike device known as a "tickler" through the crop, shooing away rodents and other undesirables. Then it sliced the plants with a band-saw blade, haJf an inch from the ground. The cut leaves fell onto the first of a series of conveyor belts. One had a vibrating grid that shook out any small pieces. Other belts were separated by "air jumps," with fans blow- ing up through them. Rocks, insects, and other heavy objects fell through the gaps, while the leaves wafted gently up to the next belt. At the top of the incline, the greens were sprinkled with water and gently dropped into twenty-pound bins, a line of which snaked down a conveyor belt of their own. At full speed, the machine can har- vest forty thousand pounds of greens a day: And Earthbound, I was told, always runs at full speed. From the moment the crop is harvested until bags of salad reach grocery stores, three to six days later, the company is in a dead sprint to preserve shelf life. The greens are carried straight from the harvester to a refriger- ated truck in the field. From there, they go to a nearby factory; equipped with processing machines that are like those at TKO but engineered to the tightest tolerances. The salad washers look like rides at a water park, with paddle wheels that submerge the leaves in a lightly cWorinated stream and bubbling agita- tors that toss them clean. The spinners are perfectly calibrated to keep from crushing the lettuce against their sides The form fillers weigh the salad in pre- cise increments, drop it into Ziploc bags fused together on the spot, then puff the bags with the proper gases before completely sealing them. At every stage of the process-from truck to factory to refrigerated shelf in the supermarket- the salad is kept between thirty-four and thirty-six degrees Fahrenheit. The "cold chain," as salad producers call it, is never broken. Organic growers still produce only seven per cent of the bagged salad sold in this countryr, but their operations are some of the most efficient and compet- itive in the industryr. That's one reason Koons focussed on mâche: when he founded Epic Roots, in 1998-after working as a consultant for another or- ganic grower-Earthbound wasn t grow- ing it yet. He spent five years testing growing techniques and mâche varieties (there are more than two hundred). Then he went looking for some help. David Gill and Mike Hitchcock, Koons's two principal partners, are among the most experienced growers in the valley: together, they farm fourteen thousand acres of other salads and veg- etables in addition to mâche. By the time Koons approached them, they'd seen arugula take of in the late nineteen- nineties, and they were willing to take a chance on the next great green. "We thought we'd all make millions of dol- lars," Gill told me. "We didn't antici- pate how tough it would be to grow." Still, the learning curve has been no steeper than it was for mesclun. This THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 6, 2004 ' 143